For­mer Chongqing Party chief charged with bribery

Sun Zheng­cai, for­mer sec­re­tary of the Chongqing Mu­nic­i­pal Com­mit­tee of the Com­mu­nist Party of China, has been charged with bribery, the Supreme Peo­ple’s Procu­ra­torate said on Tues­day.

Sun, 54, also was a mem­ber of the Po­lit­i­cal Bureau of the 18th CPC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee.

The procu­ra­torate trans­ferred Sun’s case to the first branch of Tian­jin Peo­ple’s Procu­ra­torate af­ter com­plet­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion ac­cord­ing to law. The in­dict­ment has been de­liv­ered to the First In­ter­me­di­ate Peo­ple’s Court of Tian­jin by the first branch of the Tian­jin Peo­ple’s Procu­ra­torate, China’s top procu­ra­torate said.

Sun is ac­cused of tak­ing ad­van­tage of his posts to seek profit for oth­ers and of il­le­gally ac­cept­ing huge amounts of money and prop­erty while serv­ing as the Party chief of Bei­jing’s Shunyi district, Stand­ing Com­mit­tee mem­ber and sec­re­tary of the CPC Bei­jing Mu­nic­i­pal Com­mit­tee, agri­cul­ture min­is­ter, sec­re­tary of the CPC Jilin Pro­vin­cial Com­mit­tee, Po­lit­i­cal Bureau mem­ber of the CPC Cen­tral Com­mit­tee, and Party sec­re­tary of Chongqing, ac­cord­ing to the in­dict­ment.

In July, the Cen­tral Com­mis­sion for Dis­ci­pline In­spec­tion of the CPC launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Sun for “se­ri­ous dis­ci­pline vi­o­la­tions”. In Septem­ber, Sun was ex­pelled from the Party and dis­missed from pub­lic of­fice.

The CPC Chongqing Mu­nic­i­pal Com­mit­tee held a meet­ing on Tues­day to brief its mem­bers about the pros­e­cu­tion of Sun, Chongqing Daily re­ported.

The com­mit­tee be­lieved that Sun’s po­lit­i­cal am­bi­tion and self­ish de­sire be­came over­in­flated. He broke many Party dis­ci­pline rules and be­came cor­rupt, the news­pa­per re­ported.

Sun con­tin­ued his wrong­do­ing even af­ter the 18th CPC Na­tional Con­gress held in 2012. What he did sig­nif­i­cantly dam­aged the im­age of the Party and na­tional in­ter­ests, the com­mit­tee said.

The pros­e­cu­tion of Sun demon­strates the cen­tral lead­er­ship’s de­ter­mi­na­tion in fight­ing cor­rup­tion and its all­out ef­fort to en­force strict Party dis­ci­pline. It also shows that no one has spe­cial priv­i­lege un­der the law, it added.

A high pro­file anti-cor­rup­tion cam­paign that be­gan five years ago has led to the down­fall of a num­ber of se­nior of­fi­cials. The CPC has said it is com­mit­ted to se­cur­ing “a sweep­ing vic­tory” against cor­rup­tion.

Since the 19th CPC Na­tional Con­gress in Oc­to­ber, sev­eral of­fi­cials at or above deputy min­is­te­rial level and se­nior mil­i­tary of­fi­cials have been in­ves­ti­gated or pun­ished, in­clud­ing for­mer Chi­nese mil­i­tary chief of staff Fang Fenghui; and vice-gover­nors of Shaanxi, Shan­dong and Jiangxi prov­inces.

Lower level of­fi­cials have not avoided pun­ish­ment. In Jan­uary, the CCDI named a num­ber of grass­roots of­fi­cials im­pli­cated in the abuse of poverty-re­lief funds, bri­betak­ing, em­bez­zle­ment and fraud­u­lently ob­tain­ing sub­sis­tence al­lowances.

Last year, nearly 450 peo­ple were in­ves­ti­gated and pun­ished for fraud­u­lent claims or mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds and 730 mil­lion yuan ($115 mil­lion) of mis­used funds re­cov­ered, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the State Coun­cil Lead­ing Group Of­fice of Poverty Al­le­vi­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment.

The lead­ers of su­per­vi­sion com­mis­sions in 31 Chi­nese prov­inces, au­ton­o­mous re­gions, mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties and the Xin­jiang Pro­duc­tion and Con­struc­tion Corps have been elected to en­sure that “all pub­lic ser­vants ex­er­cis­ing pub­lic power” are sub­ject to su­per­vi­sion.

A na­tional su­per­vi­sion com­mis­sion will be es­tab­lished at the first ses­sion of the 13th Na­tional Peo­ple’s Con­gress, sched­uled for March 5.